


Game night

by thewightknight



Series: Champion of the Just [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Wicked Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-03 21:04:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2887865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewightknight/pseuds/thewightknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ser Barris is invited to a night of Wicked Grace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As I was haunting the very minimal Ser Barris tag on tumblr, I came across a post wondering why Ser Barris is Ser Barris, and not Sir Delrin. 
> 
> Also, I was wondering what Varric's nickname for him would be.

Before he left Skyhold again, he left a note in the drawer for Evelyn, a few lines and a drawing of their two hands entwined. When he returned, he was greeted by the sight of the red and gold tassel hanging off a drawerpull on his desk. 

They continued their trend of not being at Skyhold at the same time over the next two months. He still missed her horribly, but knowing she missed him as well lessened the ache somewhat. 

 

One evening, as he was returning from reviewing field reports with Cullen, he was hailed again by Blackwall as he was walking through the courtyard. 

“Knight-Commander, do you have plans this evening? Varric is rounding up bodies for another game of Wicked Grace.” He hesitated, and Blackwall added, “No worries. Unless you directly challenge our ambassador, it’s likely that you will leave with all your clothes still on your body.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” he said, and Blackwall clapped him on the shoulder, laughing, and led him into the Herald’s Rest. 

Varric hailed them as they walked in. “Hero! You found us another player! Good work. Pull up a chair, Knight-Commander. You know the rules, right?”

“I’m familiar,” he hedged. 

A corner of Varric’s mouth twitched. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

He looked around the table. Iron Bull took up one end, across from Varric. Along one side were Josephine and the elf girl (what was her name again?). Blackwall took the chair next to Varric across from Josephine, which left him the seat next to Bull. 

“Is this a regular occurrence?” he asked, as Varric shuffled. 

“Not as regular as I’d like,” the dwarf replied. “Things happen and people go places, and it’s hard to get more than a few bodies together.” He started dealing. Josephine picked up each card as it was dealt but everyone else waited until Varric finished before looking at their hands. “We got everyone together once.”

Bull slapped the table, laughing. “That was epic.”

Delrin studied the group as they sorted their cards. They had the advantage, being already familiar with each other’s tells. That meant they’d all be concentrating on him. He settled his face into a half smile before he picked up his hand. 

He played it cautiously for the first few rounds. Josephine, especially, was watching him closely. Even if he hadn’t already been warned, it would have quickly become obvious that she had a huge competitive streak. He folded early on the third round. Surprisingly, Josephine folded as well. 

As play continued around them, she turned to him. “Ser Barris, a question, if I may?” He nodded. “Why is it that you are called by your surname? Most Templars are referred to by their given name.”

He smiled at her. “It’s a really simple thing. When I was a recruit, there were three other Delrins. Delrin de Carvalho got to stay Delrin, but Delrin Mobley, Delrin Vollen and I got stuck as Ser Surnames. We all got used to it, so even after training and we were transferred away from each other, we all kept it up.”

“Ser Surname! I like it!” Varric grinned.

“Oh, no. Now you’ve done it!” Sera crowed.

Delrin was confused. “I’ve done what?”

“You’ve given yourself a nickname, dear,” Josephine explained.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever that Qunari stuff Bull was passing around during Wicked Grace makes for strange dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean for this part of the series to be two chapters, but after I wrote this bit I decided that since it follows directly after the first part, it seemed better to roll these two together.

It was misting as he left the tavern, which was good, because it had been a bit too good of an evening. He’d only had two swallows of whatever Bull had been drinking, (or was it three?) and that was one too many. Maybe two (or three?) too many. He breathed in deeply as he walked, and took a roundabout path through the courtyard, but was still feeling unsteady when he reached his rooms. Why was he living in a tower, anyways?

He managed to shed his boots and most of his clothing between the doorway and his bed and burrowed in under the covers. He was asleep (unconscious?) almost immediately, and the dreams started shortly after. 

He was back at his old Circle tower in Jainen, as a Templar recruit, training outside the barracks. The Inquisitor and all her companions were drilling beside him. They were doing sword and shield exercises and he was sparring with Bull, except instead of the sword and shield everyone else was using, he had a sausage and a wheel of cheese. He quickly lost his cheese shield, impaled on one of Bull’s horns, and was reduced to running and dodging around piles of abandoned equipment while eluding the Qunari’s attacks. 

The piles of equipment began growing larger and larger and if he ran fast enough he could lose Bull and hide, his dream-self realized. A burst of speed and a few twists and turns and he ducked behind a hill of old armor and broken weapons, running directly into dream-Evelyn. “Shhhh,” she whispered, and kissed him, once, twice, and her hands were warm against his cheeks and instead of sitting up leaning against a mountain of gear he was lying flat on his back and she was stretched out on top of him and there was nothing between his hands and her skin and slowly he came to the realization that he was no longer dreaming.

“You’re here,” he marveled in between kisses.

“I’m here,” she replied, and he could feel her smile against his lips as she kissed him again. He was just coming to realize that for once they had complete privacy and no constraints on their time when the door to the room exploded inward.

Evelyn rolled off the bed away from the door, grabbing her daggers from the floor as she moved, and Iron Bull burst into the room, with Leliana directly behind him, followed by a hand of Templars in various stages of undress, all with weapons at the ready. “Boss?” Bull said, incredulous.

A moment of shocked silence followed as they all took in the scene. It was worth the look, Barris couldn’t help but think, as Evelyn faced them down, daggers in hand, framed by the moonlight coming in from the balcony, wearing nothing but her pair of daggers. 

Leliana broke the silence. “Knight-Commander. Inquisitor. I saw someone climbing up the side of the tower. We were afraid of an assassination attempt.” 

Evelyn lowered her knives, and cleared her throat, embarrassed. “That would have been me, actually.” 

He saw them all note the unintentional matching trails, his clothes from the door to the bed and hers from the balcony. Leliana’s face was almost completely blank, but one corner of her mouth was twitching. The Templars split between staring at the floor and the ceiling. Bull was staring unabashedly, and Evelyn seemed to finally realize that she was completely unclad and slid back into the bed, dropping her daggers on the end table and pulling the coverlet up over herself. 

“We’re, er, sorry to have interrupted. We’ll see what we can do about the door on the way out?” Leliana made shooing motions at the group, but his men were already rushing to leave the room, trying to do so faster than they’d come in. Two of them tried to push through the doorway at the same time and got stuck. 

The doorframe was shattered and the door had split in two from Bull’s charge. The Qunari managed to prop the pieces against each other somehow, and they heard his footsteps recede down the stairs.

When the last sounds faded, Evelyn leaned back against him. “This is not how I planned for this evening to go.”

He folded his arms around her, and they sat there.

“You actually climbed the outside of the tower?” he asked finally.

“Well, yes. When you’re here there are too many people in the lower floors to sneak up like I normally do.”

“Oh.” They sat in silence for a bit longer, and he asked, “Why are we sneaking, anyways?” 

She sighed. “I could say it’s a political thing - that I’m avoiding feeding the gossip mill, or giving our opponents the opportunity to undermine us. They’d love to spread around that the only reason you were promoted to Knight-Commander was because you are my lover, I’m sure. But that’s not why. This whole thing, being a part of the Inquisition, being the Inquisitor…. It’s so much. It’s become my whole life. And it’s been nice to have one part of my life that was still mine and mine alone.”

They sat together for a while longer in silence, and then she chuckled. “So much for an uninterrupted evening and a bed.”

“Well, my dear Inquisitor, just a few steps away is a room with several very comfortable couches, and an unbroken door. Care to join me?” 

She laughed in delight and slid off the bed, pulling him along with her to the sitting room, where they determined that while not quite as comfortable as his bed would have been, a couch was still a definite improvement over stone hallways and hay bales.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Dragon Age Wiki has two Ferelden Circles listed: the one at Lake Calenhad that you see in Origins and another at Jainen, in the Waking Sea Bannorn. I decided to pick that one for Barris to have trained at, just for variety.

**Author's Note:**

> I finally made Evelyn up in the character creator. [It's nice to have a face to go with the story.](http://dbvictoria.tumblr.com/post/114455213333/ive-been-writing-about-evelyn-enough-i-figured-i)
> 
> Feel free to come say hi over on [tumblr](http://thewightknight.tumblr.com/).


End file.
